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by Uta Ranke-Heinemann
Chapter 9 from Eunuchs for Heaven, German
publication Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, Hamburg 1988; English publication by
André Deutsch, London 1990, pp. 108 -117. We have not been able to
locate the author or publisher.
A
biblical passage much beloved by churchmen (I Cor. 1-l: 24) states that women
should ‘keep silence’ in church. Although the Bible is the word of
God, the word of man sometimes intrudes, and this is clearly a case in point.
While not attempting to soften St. Paul’s injunction. I would merely pose
one counter-question: how do those who insist on feminine silence account for
the fact in the same epistle (11: 5) Paul alludes to women preaching publicly
in church, and that he does so as if speaking of something so commonplace that
it requires no further explanation? Innumerable attempts- have been made to
explain his demand for silence (it was inserted later by someone else or refers
simply to ‘interruptions’, because men, too, are enjoined to silence
a few verses earlier [14: 28 and 30], and so on and so forth). Whatever
construction one places on the remark, it is not as straightforwardly or
unreservedly hostile to women as many clerics choose to think.
This
is not to deny that, unlike Jesus, women’s friend, Paul and other New
Testament writers sometimes voice ‘male chauvinist’ sentiments. I
Timothy (2: 12), for instance, categorically states: ‘But I suffer not a
woman to teach.’ If I Corinthians (14: 24) is not enough, therefore, the
epistles to Timothy can be cited, whether or not they were written by Paul.
There it is in biblical black and white - or is it? The same passage from I
Timothy occurs in close proximity to a demand that women should not adorn
themselves ‘with braided hair, or gold, or pearls’ (2: 9). This is
taken less literally today - at least, it is not standard practice for female
churchgoers to surrender their earrings and brooches for safekeeping in the
sacristy or submit their plaits - if any - for inspections.
The
truth is, many people use the Bible like a supermarket and pick out whatever
meets their current needs. In the case of another much loved verse -
‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands’ (Eph., 5: 22) -
there is a regular tendency to omit Paul’s main injunction
‘Submitting yourselves one to another’ (5: 21) -which implies that
men should also submit to their wives. This would leave men and women quits if
it were not for a further demand, a few verses below, that women should be
subject to their husbands ‘in everything’ (5: 24). It would not,
therefore, be overstating the case to concede that the New Testament does lay
more stress on woman’s subordination to man than man’s subordination
to woman. This inequality is not only regrettable but at odds with woman’s
status in the time of Jesus, for-the non Christian woman was in many ways
better off. It was only as Christianity took hold that women lost the functions
still accorded them in Paul’s epistles.
Women
were initially active in propagating the Gospel. Paul states (I Cur. 11: 5)
that they preached in church like men. The word used here,
‘prophesy’, is better translated as ‘preach’ because it
signifies ‘forth-tell’ rather than ‘foretell’ and was an
act of formal proclamation. Women like Phebe were deaconesses (Rom16: 1f.), and
Paul refers to himself as a deacon or ‘minister’ (Col. l: 25), one of
whose duties (according to Col. 1: 28) was to teach. Priscilla is called
Paul’s ‘helper in Jesus Christ’: (Rom. 16: 3), a designation he
always associates with official authority. Official service within the
Christian community is described by I Corinthians 16: 16 as a form of
‘labour’, Romans 16: 12 alludes to three women who ‘labour in
the Lord’, and I Thessalonians 5: 12, describes those who labour in this
way as being- ‘over you [i.e. “supervisors”] in the Lord.’
Paul
states that a woman named Junia was ‘of note among the apostles’
(Rom. 16: 7). Although she has since undergone a sex change and been
transmogrified into a man, the early Church knew better. Jerome and Chrysostom,
for example, took it for granted that Junia was a woman. Chrysostom writes:
‘How enlightened and capable a woman she must have been, to be esteemed
worthy of the title apostle, nay more, to be pre-eminent among the
apostles’ (‘In epistolam ad Romanos homilia’, 31, 12). Until the
late Middle Ages, not a single interpreter of Romans 16: 7 construed Junia as a
man’s name (v. B. Brooten in E. Moltmann-Wendel [ed.],
‘Frauenbefreiung. Biblische and Theologische Argumente’, pp. 148-51).
Since then, it has been appropriated by men in the course of women’s
persistent repression by the Church. The history of Christianity is also the
history of women’s progressive silencing and incapacitation. If this
development has been checked in the Christian West, it is in spite of the
Church, not thanks to it and certainly not within it.
The
Church’s denigration of women is rooted in the idea that they are somehow
impure and inconsistent with sanctity. In the clerical view, women were
second-class men. Clement of Alexandria (d. before 215) said of woman that
‘the very awareness of her own nature must arouse a sense of shame’
(’Paidagogos’, 11, 33, 2). Although he did not explain the reason for
her natural shame, he enlightened her on how she should dress: ‘The woman
Should be completely veiled save when at home. By covering her face she will
tempt no one; to sin. for it is the will of the Word that it befits her to be
covered at prayer’ (ibid., III, 79, 4). The rule that women should be
veiled applied primarily to the ecclesiastical domain. The Apostolic
Constitutions (c. 380); also laid it down (II, 57) that women could communicate
only when veiled. and the veiling of women in church was likewise demanded by
Pope Nicholas I in his celebrated letter to the Bulgars in 866. In the sixth
century, it was even insisted that women cover their hands: ‘A woman may
not receive the Eucharist with bare hands’ (Mansi, ‘Sacr. conc.
collectio’, 9, 915 ). Clerical injunctions to women to cover themselves
up, which were frequent at that time, constituted only one of many repressive
measures against the female sex.
But
the covering-up rule was not confined to the ecclesiastical domain. Chrysostom,
invoking St Paul (who was not, in fact, referring to the same subject at all),
declared that a woman ‘should be veiled, not only while praying but at all
times’ (Homily 26 on I Cor 11: 5). ‘Paul says not that she must be
covered, but veiled, that is to say, most carefully enshrouded’ (ibid. on
11: 6). Chrysostom was not only exaggerating but mistranslating. Paul did not
enjoin women to wear veils. He was alluding to a specific hairstyle
affected by devout Jewish women and Pharisees in particular. ‘With her
head uncovered’ was tantamount to saying ‘with her hair loose’ -
the mark of a dissolute life. ‘Covering the head’ meant simply
‘doing one’s hair’, but Chrysostorn was not alone in
misconstruing Paul here. In some countries, women may even today be compelled
to borrow a hat or a veil before entering a church.
The
heading ‘On the Veiling of Women’, a later addition found in many
translations of I Corinthians 11, is equally erroneous. The passage refers to
women’s coiffure. The respectable Jewish woman of Jesus’s day began
by plaiting her hair and arranging the plaits atop a woolen cloth worn low over
the eyes. Then came a headband and another small cloth over the plaits to hold
them in place. Finally, the whole edifice was reinforced with a hair-net. The
wife of the celebrated rabbi Akiba (d. 135) is reported to have sold her,
plaits to finance her husband’s studies. This indicates that many women
purchased a coiffure appropriate to their social status if not endowed by
nature with sufficient hair of their own (v. H. L. Strack and P. Billerbeck,
‘Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch’, III, p.
427f.). The great sinner who dried Jesus’s feet with her hair was a woman
whose loose hair betokened a loose way of life. By contrast, the Talmud
mentions that a woman whose seven sons were high priests never went around,
even at home, with her hair loose (ibid p. 430). If a woman could not dress her
hair respectably, Paul argued, she might as well complete her disgrace by
having her head shorn completely (I Cor 11: 6). At all events, he was referring
to hair, not to veils or hats, and he was not the last to confuse fashions in
dress with questions of respectability and morality.
Even
if Paul was not speaking of veils or hats, it must nonetheless be conceded that
his insistence on tidy hair in women implied ‘a wish to make them conform
to patriarchal custom. He did not, however, go as far as his repressive
celibatarian exegetists. It is noteworthy that he enjoined women to cover
themselves (dress their, hair properly) while praying and preaching
ìn public. Characteristically enough, Chrysostom omits this
reference to preaching altogether: The process.. whereby women were muzzled and
concealed as far as possible from the public gaze was already in full swing.
The female preacher vanished from the ecclesiastical stage. From the
Church’s point of view, the most meritorious woman became she who was
least often mentioned, seen; -and heard. Paul’s ruling on hairstyles was
transformed into a.celibatarian cloak of invisibility in which women could be
completely enveloped. Of all the New Testament’s topical precepts, the
Church has been most at pains to preserve and add to those that relate to
woman’s inferior status. Where others are concerned, e.g. the ban on
usury, it adopts a more broad-minded attitude. Papal banks have long been
accustomed to charging interest.
Like
Chrysostom, Ambrose urged women to walk the streets veiled: ‘Let the women
veil her head, that she see her chastity and modesty assured, even in public.
Her countenance must not readily present itself to a young man’s gaze,
wherefore she must be covered with the nuptial veil’ (‘De
poenitentia’, I. 16). The Apostolic Constitutions likewise prescribed that
women be veiled in public.
The
Church took still other steps to lower women’s status. The Synod of Elvira
(early fourth century) decreed in Canon 81 that women should neither write nor
receive letters in their own name. The Synod of Gangra (also fourth century)
forbade women to cut their hair, a prohibition aimed at the female followers of
Eustathius of Sebaste (d.c. 380), who had founded a rigorously ascetic sect.
‘In I Corinthians (11: 10) the Apostle Paul considers women’s long
hair, which is given them as a natural veil, to be a token of their subjection
to man. Since many female Eustathians were throwing off the yoke and leaving
their husbands, as we learn from the Synod of Gangra, they also discarded that
token of subjection, their long hair’ (Hefele,
‘Konziliengeschichte’, 1, p. 760).
Celibatarian regimentation of women extended to their private lives as well.
The Apostolic Constitutions adjured than not to wash too often:
‘Furthermore, she [woman] shall not wash herself with undue frequency,
neither at midday, nor, as far as possible, daily. As the proper time for a
bath, however, let the tenth hour be assigned her’ (1, 9). Clement of
Alexandria addressed himself to the subject of sport for women. Having
recommended athletics for young men - ‘Men should either engage in
wrestling stripped or play ball’ (‘Paidagogos’, III 50, 1) - he
goes on: ‘Even women should be permitted some form of physical exercise,
not on the wrestling-mat or the running track, but in spinning and weaving and,
if need arise, supervising the cooking. Moreover, they are to fetch whatever we
need from the larder with their own hand’ (ibid., 49, 2f.).
Chrysostom (d. 407) heaved a pious sigh over women in general ‘The whole
sex is frail and frivolous’ (Homily 9 on I Tim., 2: 15) - but had an
answer to their problem: ‘What, then? Is there no hope for them? indeed
there is! What form does it take? Salvation through children’ (ibid.).
Ambrose (d.397), on the other hand, considered children and their attendant
responsibilities, as well as their manifest evidence that the mother had known
carnal pleasure, to be definite grounds for rejecting motherhood and
recommending virginity instead: However much a noble woman may pride herself on
a numerous brood of children, her burdens increase in proportion to their
number. However much she may count the consolations her children bring her, she
may also count her tribulations. She becomes a mother, but tribulations are not
long in coming: before ever she can press her child to her heart, she must cry
out in her birth-pangs . . . The daughters of this world are married and marry;
the daughter of the kingdom of heaven abstains from all carnal pleasure’
(‘De virginibus’, I, 6).
Thanks to theologians of this type, women were ousted from the ecclesiastical
domain at an early stage. It is not surprising that they were forbidden to hold
ecclesiastical office. This was laid down by the Apostolic Constitutions, the
most extensive canonical and liturgical compilation of the fourth century
century which claimed to have been written by the Apostles and wielded great
influence on that account. (It was largely incorporated in the Decretum
Gratiani [c. 1140], of which more will be said in due course, and has thus
retained its importance to this day.)
We do
not permit women to exercise the office of teacher within the Church; they are
only to pray and listen to the teachers- For our teacher and Lord Jesus Himself
sent us only the Twelve to instruct the people and the heathen, but never
women, although there was no lack of the same. For here were were with us the
mother of the Lord, and her sister, and Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of
James, and Martha and Mary the sisters of Lazarus, and Salome, and sundry
others. Thus, had it been proper for women, He would Himself have appointed
them. But, if a man be the head of a woman, it is unfitting that the rest of
the body rule the head
(‘Apostolic Constitutions’, III, 6)
Women had
to keep as silent in church as their pastors ordained - so silent that they
were only permitted to move their lips. ‘Maidens shall silently pray or
silently read the Psalms, moving their lips alone so that no one hears;
“for I suffer not a woman to speak in church”. Women shall do
likewise. When they pray, their lips shall move, but no one may hear their
voice.’ Thus Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386; . ‘Introductory
Catechesis’, 14).
Mary
did not baptise Jesus. This, so the Apostolic Constitutions claimed proved that
women were unqualified. to perform baptisms or other priestly functions.
‘If we have previously not permitted women to preach, how should anyone
unnaturally accord them priestly office?. To make priestesses of women is an
error of heathen godlessness, not a commandment of Christ. [Heathen priests
we’ re evidently less hostile to ‘women than their Christian
counterparts] But if women, too, were permitted to baptise, the Lord would
surely have been baptised by His ‘own mother, and not by John.(Apostolic
Constitutions’, III, 9). Tertullian (d.c. 220) was equally insistent that
women should not be allowed to baptise or teach. While emphasising that baptism
could be performed could be performed by all’, he strictly excluded women:
Let us hope that the wild presumption of women, which has dared to wish to
teach will not also arrogate the right to baptise’ (‘De
baptismo’,17)
Women
wee a also forbidden to officiate at the altar. The Synod of Laedicea (fourth
century; Canon 44) state, that women may not approach the altar’. The
Synod of Nimes (394) debarred women from ‘priestly office’ in
opposition to the Priscillianists a Christian sect that admitted women priests.
Pope Gelasius. writing to the bishops of Lucania in 494, likewise regarded
ministration by women as an abuse: ‘We have learned to our annoyance that
even women, so it is said, are ministering at holy altars, and that all that is
entrusted exclusively to the ministration of men is being performed by the sex
not entitled thereto.’ A similar complaint was made at the Synod of Nantes
(658). In the East, too, at a Persian synod in Nisibis (485). Metropolitan
Barsumas and his bishops forbade women to enter the baptistery and witness
baptisms on the ground that sins of impurity and impermissible marriages had
resulted from their presence. The Synod of Aachen (789) decreed that women
should not set foot in the sanctuary, the synodal statutes of St Boniface (d.
754) forbade women to sing in church, and the reformist Synod of Paris (829)
bemoaned the following deplorable state of affairs ‘It occurs in some
provinces that women cluster about the altar, touch the sacred vessels, hand
the priests their priestly robes - indeed, even dispense the body and blood of
Our Lord to the people. This is disgraceful and must not occur . . . It has
doubtless arisen owing to the carelessness and negligence of many
bishops.’
The
Second Pseudo-Isidorian Decretal, a forgery (probably c. 850) attributed to
Pope Soter (168 - 77) but entirely consistent with the repression of women
preached by leaders of the Church, stated that ‘It has been reported to
the Apostolic See that female persons consecrated to God or nuns touch your
sacred vessels and consecrated linen. That all this merits strong disapproval
and reproof cannot be doubted by any who know what is proper. We therefore
declare by the authority of this Holy See that you are to do away with all this
and thus prevent this plague from spreading to every province.’ Cited as
papal authority by Gratian c. 1140, this forgery still wields considerable
influence (v. Raming ‘Der Ausschluss der Frau vom priesterlichen
Amt’, p. 9). It has helped to ensure that women in general, and not just
the ‘plague’ of nuns, have been excluded from the altar down the
centuries to the present day.
The
ban has been maintained in the twentieth century, too. In 1917 it was firmly
entrenched in the ecclesiastical legal code (Codex Iuris Canonici, , or CIC for
short): ‘A female person may not minister. An exception is permitted only
when no male Person is available and just cause is present. The female person
may not, however, approach the altar under any circumstances, and may only
respond from afar’ ‘ (Canon 813/2). Celebration (Mass) with a nun as
ministrant is permitted in a convent chapel, but: ‘Were a male ministrant
readily available, a venial sin would be committed. It is, however. forbidden
on pain of grave sin. for the female ministrant to approach the altar’
Heribert Jone, ‘Katholische Moraltheologie’ . 444) Canon 906 of the
revised CIC which has been in force since 1983 is only an apparent advance in
that it calls for ‘the participation of a believer’ in celebrating
Mass and thus seems to remove the ban on women ministrants. Canon 230/1 makes
it clear, however, that the office of acolyte - which covers that of ministrant
= may be entrusted to men alone. Besides, Pope John Paul II had already
stipulated in an instruction prettily entitled ‘The Inestimable Gift’
1980) that ‘women are not permitted the functions of a ministrant ’.
And that, for the moment, is that.
From
ancient rimes until very recently, women were forbidden to sing in, church
choirs. Even in our own century, Pius X re-emphasised this prohibition on the
ground that women were not permitted to fulfil any liturgical function
(‘Motu proprio de musica sacra’, 1903). Ph. Hartman's
‘Repertorium Rituum’ of 1912 stated: ‘Only men of known piety
and probity, who show themselves worthy of that sacred office, shall be
admitted to membership of a church choir. Since singers in church occupy a
liturgical office, women’s voices may not be employed in church singing.
Thus, if it is required to employ high soprano and alto voices, boys must be
enlisted’ (p. 360). The tide did not turn until a few decades ago.
Johannes Kley’s edition of the ‘Repertorium Rituum’ 1940
reproduces the above passage verbatim but adds: ‘though women, too, are
now generally admitted’ (p. 403). Pius XII cautiously sanctioned female
choristers, though only ‘outside the presbytery or the altar
precincts’ (‘Instructio de musica sacra’, AAS 48 [1958] 658). It
is not beyond the bounds of possibility, however, that reformers like the
present Pope will some day purge church choirs of female interlopers.
In the
past, castrated choristers provided a means of resisting any invasion by the
female sex. The ‘Lexikon fur Theologie und Kirche’ informs us that
The
castration of boys in order to preserve their soprano or alto voices was
practised in Italy, in particular, from the 16th to the 18th centuries. There,
in contrast to Germany and France, the earliest castrati quickly gained
admission to church choirs; under Clement VIII (1592-1605) they took the place
of falsetto sopranos in the Sistine Chapel, though they failed to establish
themselves as altos. They disappeared from secular music at the beginning of
the 19th century, but castrati were still singing in the Sistine Chapel at the
beginning of the 20th.
(VI,
1961, p- 16)
If
things develop in tine with papal notions of the sanctity of divine service,
they may even raise their voices once more.
To
anyone taking an overall view of the repression and suppression of women, their
denigration and disparagement, the whole of ecclesiastical history seems one
long series of narrow-minded, arbitrary male impositions upon the opposite sex.
This tyranny still endures. The subjection of woman to man has remained a
theologian's postulate throughout, and the male-dominated Church of today
continues to regard that subjection as a God-given dogma. It has never grasped
that the reality of the Church is founded on the common humanity and fellowship
of man and woman. The apartheid practised against women by the rules of the
Church is as much of an affront to justice as political apartheid. Far from
improving matters, their invocation of divine authority merely imparts a
blasphemous flavour to an unjust mode of conduct. Above all, though, a purely
masculine Church has long ceased to be a church in the full sense, however it
may style itself, because masculine arrogance has prompted it to dispense with
one vital aspect of the catholicity - the universality - of which it should be
a living example. It has long since exchanged its universality for arrogant
The
masculine Church has reduced Christianity to a shrunken relic of its original
self, a desiccated celibatarians' credo. That is why the clergy have so largely
lost sight of the true nature of the Christian faith. Cardinal Hengsbach of
Essen typified this at a recent service of ordination. According to the
‘Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung’ of 24 May 1988, he described
‘the current sensational demand for the abolition of the bond between
celibacy and the priesthood’ as ‘a crisis of faith’. Worse
still, he declared this to be ‘the true religious crisis of the present
time.’ Worse still, he declared this to be ‘the true crisis of the
present time.’ In other words, to question obligatory celibacy constitutes
a crisis of faith, whereas blind adherence to that obligation is true faith. If
such prelatic pronouncements prove anything, it is that their authors are blind
to the real exigencies of the present age. If they wished to broaden their
pastoral horizons sufficiently to gain sight of true human needs and the true
crisis of faith, women - is so permitted - could be of assistance to
them.
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